You mentioned 'growing' the Spirit Realm

[Idracab]

So I was thinking today about playing my bard again, because there seems to be a real dearth of bards at the higher level. As always, the first thing I do is read up on the class, see what spells (songs in this case ) they get, and try to get a feel for how to play.

I went to http://www.eqdiva.com and, well, it's dead. I went to the Bard section of EQLive, and again, not exactly a bustle of activity. Unless I'm mistaken, there doesn't seem to be a single place where bards get together these days to talk about ... well ... bardy stuffs.

The cool thing about this site is that people of all classes come to it to get information. The EQ community has really dwindled recently, and it's becoming apparent that the day of the 'single class' site is going away. I guess you still have evilgamer for shadowknights and goberserker for zerkers, but besides that ... well, have you gone to graffes or the safehouse recently? Even those HUGE class sites are pretty much dead.

But this is about bards. I think that class would be an excellent fit to the community here. They are a smaller class, yes, but generally people who play bards are passionate about the game and they would really fit in nicely here.

So ... what would we have to do to get a bard section set up here?

***
EDIT: I glanced through the forums here and saw a post about bards that pointed to eqdiva.com and http://forums.theconcerthall.net/index.php. The concert hall seems a bit more active, but again the last post in the songs section was from 4 months ago, and there are a grand total of 4 posts total in that section this year. The 'equipment' section has ZERO posts. The last post in the epic quest section is from 10 months ago. And, most importantly for me, it's JUST the forums. I would love to see a bard site that, well, is like this. I like the 'desk links' section here that has static pages showing spells / AAs / whathaveyou.

So I know there are a couple of sites for bards (sadly none of which is very active), but I think there's a need for a more 'overall' place for bards to go. This could be that place. Maybe.

[Samanna]

I'd be happy to have the Bards here. I could knock out a Bard section like the other classes have this weekend.

Anyone else have an opinion about it?

I know the Druid section is off to a slow start, and it wasn't my intention to split the community.

Perhaps any class sections that don't seem to take off can maybe be consolidated into a single class forum after a certain period; they can always be expanded back out if there's an increase in activity later on.

[Vasei]

I think it's a win/win. I don't see much activity on those boards, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who's gone there to post a question, but felt too ... ok, LAZY to register an account on a board with no activity.

Mostly importantly (irrelevantly), I've never met a bard I didn't like. I'd love to see them cavorting around these boards.

Of course, if the bards get in, I'm going to start hoping we can have all the wizard info on here all nice and pretty, too.

[Tharkis]

The only bad part about the bards... we'd have to take in Jyve ! /pokes Jyve with a sharp stick, muwhah

[Kevis]

I am in the same boat as the op. I have let my shaman fall to the side as the monk friend i was duoing with left the game a couple months ago on a break. I am hoping this new effort from SOE will bring him back, but i digress. I have messed around on a necro alt, beastlord, and there i have my first ever eq char, and former main, a lvl 65 bard. I have been wanting to get back into playing him and i have done the same thing going to eqdiva and concerthall forums only to see like 5 posts from 2008. It is sad.

I would love to see a bard area and hopefully some active bard talk around here.

[Brohg]

Before opening yet another full scale, and presumably fully dead, bard forum, germinate it with good resources. Collate whatever class information is publicly available into a wiki presence. A thread (this thread, retitled) in General EQ Discussion can be the more living, interactive appendage of that presence. If you're successful in making samanna.net/wiki a premier resource for bards, then you'll have the de facto community presence to support a full forum. Said otherwise, I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Get your community, build the home with it.

[Samanna]

[Kianor]

In the mean time, why not have a "Other classes - class specific" board, or something like that? A general forum for class specific stuff that isn't Shaman, Paladin or Druid. We've had occasional questions about stuff like that already, and nowhere really for it to go except "General EQ".

[Brohg]

We have that already, Kianor. It's called General EQ Discussion. If someone wants bard discussion, all they have to do is start a thread discussing bards

[Saintsaens]

heh, to be honest, until I joined my current guild a month ago after being in the same guild for the past 5 years, I hadn't had the luxury of having more than one bard available to play with that played with any sort of regularity. Now, I have like 5 or 6.

I think bards were one of the hardest hit classes with the nerf to kiting a few years ago, and never recovered from it. That's why there's not much information.

I would be happy to help with any sort of information to create a wiki for them, however, I am the first to admit that I don't know the first thing about bards, since I hadn't been around many of them for years, so I wouldn't know what is important to know about the class. If someone could point me towards some good threads on the Concert Hall or EQDiva, I would collect the information, but atm, anything I collect would be shooting in the dark as to its relevance and importance to the EQ of today.

[Brohg]

[Brohg]

Are the uncored templates sold by Strike Force merchant equipable? Magelo shows them having instrument mods. Going statless on all those slots at once is probably a mistake, but if it let you potentially use two much better weapons than 2.0...

[Samanna]

My new guild has some pretty active Bards, I'll see if they have any interest.

ps - http://samanna.net/wiki/index.php/Category:Bard

[Vasei]

Also, is anybody at Concert Hall going to get up in arms if that info is reposted to the wiki here?

That would be the best way to get a starting point, so we're not reinventing the wheel, but treading on toes probably won't be helpful.

[Tordail]

I'm sure most of that information is available in some form or another on other Web sites, just like all of the information here. There's nothing wrong with this Web site presenting that information on its own. Sam is very good about giving credit where credit is due.

[Samanna]

Copying and pasting someone else's (or some other site's) content is one thing; collecting info from various sources and presenting it from a different perspective (or in a different way) is something else.

[Vasei]

I didn't mean to imply that content thievery was the intent. I mostly wondered if there were some way to head off that possible interpretation of getting bardy stuff on here. But then I went and posted pre-coffee. Not brilliant...

[Funi]

Just as I was indifferent about the Druids coming to these boards I am just as indifferent about the Bards coming to these boards. However, if it's really the intent to bring all these classes to this single place perhaps it's time to revisit the board title name of "The Spirit Realm" and the board address of "crucible.samanna.net". Just a suggestion...

[Samanna]

[olts]

i would definitely like to see the bards - and more classes, if not all - here. i agree with brohg though, there isnt much point to open a new section if ppl dont come here.

on the other hand: the paladin forum was dead, okay not only dead, it was closed. now, a year or so later, we have a pretty good and skillfull community here. i dont see, why this couldnt happen for bards too.

the only real other class forum is on soes site - and the info there is mostly nonsense and its always a bloody class war. at least from a paladins view. so nobody really likes to be there.

so much nicer here

c.

[Vasei]

Trying to mend my terminal n00bishness on the topic by compiling some song information from Lucy and the like. Figured I'd keep it on the wiki-thingi: http://samanna.net/wiki/index.php/Overv ... Bard_Songs

It's crude so far, and probably going to be packed with mistakes, but I'll keep working on it. Maybe others will join in. Or if you don't feel like editing there, post corrections here somewhere and I volunteer to update.

[Samanna]

Thanks, Vasei. I think it's fine. You'll notice the Shaman, Paladin and Druid spell sections are completely different; what works best for one audience isn't necessarily right for another. Present the data how you'd like to. If you want help with formatting or tables, just PM me or ask in a thread.

[Vasei]

Thanks for that invitation, I can almost guarantee I'll be taking you up on it.

So many abilities, that do such diverse things, that don't stack in so many new and interesting ways... I'll eat my hat if I DO find a way to present them all that will make some kind of sense. In the meanwhile, I can chalk it up as semi-work-related, since I think we could really use a wiki at work.

[Bardom]

Hello,

My name is Erhnam Ebayed of Rodcet Nife. I am a level 77 bard of very active status. I came to Spirit Realm, because before I went to the eqdiva and it was completely dead, then I got a link to go to Concerthall and that too was dead. In their off-topic section they mentioned this website and I clicked the hyperlink and came here. While reading the sections, I found the general section to have 4 different posts about bards and I stayed here, reading everyday, I even made a shaman that is now 62, because well, I had a 1.5 epic'd shaman 3 years ago and I wish knew about this site.

Now,
As I've seen this site have many bard topics posted up, and since I already visit here on a regular bases. I would be happy to see a bard section start here, if anything most the alts people make are bards and their questions could be answered here. As well as my alts questions will get answered here.

[Vasei]

Glad to see you here! I hope to see a lot more bards, and bardic discussion here, as I'm falling in love with the class but still piecing together an understanding of the spellbook, much less any of those advanced tricks.

[Samanna]

Hi, Bardom.

I guess I should set some arbitrary number of unique topics specific to a class before giving that class its own forum, and another number of topics before it gets its own area. An under-populated forum will look like a ghost town, and might scare away more people than it attracts.

[Kilgaroz]

Sorry if this comes out bitter, it's not intended that way. I love playing my bard, I'd not be playing EQ still if I'd not picked him up, and I love what he can do even with his old spells. They're an asset to any group or raid, I can't think of a single situation where a bard wouldn't be a good addition to the mix.

The reason so many aspects of EQDiva aren't active is that there's just not much change in the bard class, when it comes to songs. That and there's no competition. What we do is unique in the game, we don't have heals to compare with others in our archetype, we're not tanks to parse out our defensives and whether a 2her is better in this situation or 1her and shield. My bard's typical spell list contains a 63 song, a 69, 60, 65 and 51. Only half of the ten I mem are from the latest expansion, and one of those is an aura, not an actual song.

We did get quite a few hot new AAs with SoF, and some new varieties of songs that we've never had before, but they're only slightly more useful than Thorn Wilting. Who's going to mem a song that increases Disease dots ONLY for one tick, a song that doesn't seem to change from one rk to the next? Or the one that increases HoTs by one tick, when we could be twisting a dps song or an AC song? So really, once you've learned to pull, what's to discuss?